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Ice Age: The Meltdown (film)
Ice Age 2: The Meltdown (advertised simply as Ice Age: The Meltdown) is a 2006 American computer-animated comedy adventure film. It is the first sequel to the 2002 computer-animated film Ice Age. It was produced by Blue Sky Studios for 20th Century Fox, and premiered in theaters in Belgium on March 1st 2006 and the Northern Hemisphere March 31st 2006 It was eventually released in 70 countries, with the last release being in China, on June 9th 2006. It was directed by Carlos Saldanha, co-director of the original Ice Age, and the music is composed by [[Robots|'Robots']] composer, John Powell, instead of David Newman. The working title was Ice Age 2: The Meltdown, but for the film's final release, the creators decided to remove the number 2, calling it Ice Age: The Meltdown. However, in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Mexico, and Australia, its title is promoted as Ice Age 2: The Meltdown. Also, most of the sponsors of the film had the 2 in their packaging after the name change (they however did edit the 2 out of their TV ads). Plot In the opening scene, Scrat, the saber-toothed squirrel climbs a glacier to bury his acorn, but accidentally opens a hole in it, causing water to spurt out. The world of ice is slowly melting. The creatures of the Ice Age are all shown enjoying themselves on slides and pools made by the melting ice; among them the three protagonists of the first film: Manny, Sid, and Diego. Sid opens a small day camp, where none of the younger creatures take him seriously, nor do Manny and Diego, which leaves Sid seeking a daring deed. Fast Tony, a local con artist is claiming that the earth will flood and that the bark and reeds which he sells are needed to stay alive. Manny dismisses the idea, but is distracted when he sees that Sid will try to high dive from a giant waterfall; as Manny goes with Diego to the top of the waterfall to save Sid from his act of daredevilry, suddenly the ice under Diego's feet was breaking, causing him to bolt in fear, this also made Sid figure that Diego is afraid of the water. The herd figure that the pleasant weather has caused the ice shelves to melt, and it is kept from destroying the valley only by the glaciers, which have formed a dam. A lone vulture warns the animals that a giant tree can act as a boat and save them if they make it to the end of the valley within three days time, and all soon set out to find it. As the animals begin their journey, Sid sings three songs to tease Manny about Mammoths being "extinct". During the evacuation, a glacier which contains two sea reptiles from the Mesozoic era, Cretaceous and Maelstrom, breaks off. When Manny briefly is separated from them, Diego and Sid encounter two mischievous opossums named Crash and Eddie who drive them nuts by playing Whac-A-Mole with them. Manny is depressed about being the last mammoth alive and his family, which has been killed in by humans, but is surprised when he encounters Ellie, a female mammoth who believes she is an opossum and Crash and Eddie's adoptive sister. Sid invites her to tag along with the group to escape the flood, and she brings her brothers. After a perilous ordeal with Cretaceous and Maelstrom while crossing a pond, Sid prompts Diego to encourage him to admit and face his fears - Diego insists that "fear is for prey", so Sid points out that Diego is behaving as if he is the water's prey. They discover an area which Ellie recalls as the place where she was adopted. She finally realizes she is a mammoth and also expresses her suspicions about how different she was from other opossums. Despite this bonding moment with Manny, she distances herself from him when he suggests "saving their species". Ellie and Manny ultimately make up when they must co-operate to save the group when the ground cracks under their feet. Sid is kidnapped by a tribe of mini-sloths who believe Sid to be a god. Sid lights a fire for them, and believes that he has finally found respect, but they plan to sacrifice him by tossing him into a volcano. Sid narrowly escapes. The next morning, Sid tells the others his experience but none are convinced. They find a field of hot geysers, which separate Manny, Sid, and Diego from Ellie and her brothers when they argue about which way to go through it. When the flood comes, Manny saves Ellie from drowning as she is caught in a cave (due to falling rocks), while Diego overcomes his fear of water to save Sid. Cretaceous and Maelstrom arrive, but due to Manny's quick thinking, they are finished off by a rock which falls on them, killing them both. The other animals are at the mercy of the water currents. Meanwhile, Scrat climbs up the glacier and at the top sticks the acorn he has into the ice. This forms a crack in the glacier, which widens into a fissure, diverting the flood and saving the animals. Scrat is then washed away. In the final scene, a herd of mammoths shows up, but Manny and Ellie decide to remain together anyway, taking Sid, Diego, and the opossum brothers along. Sid encounters the mini-sloths again - they believe Sid stopped the flood and invite him to be their leader. Diego, surprised to see the mini-sloths are real, convinces Sid to stay with the others, reluctantly admitting that Sid is a vital part of their 'herd'. The epilogue shows Scrat having a near death experience after falling into the fissure. He enters a heaven full of acorns. Suddenly, he finds himself torn away. He unhappily wakes up, having been resuscitated by Sid, who he proceeds to viciously attack. Voice cast 1. Ray Romano as Manny[[Manny (Ice Age)|'Manny']], the woolly mammoth. 2. [[John Leguizamo|'John Leguizamo']] as Sid, the giant ground sloth. 3. Denis Leary as Diego, the Smilodon. 4. [[Chris Wedge|'Chris Wedge']] as Scrat, the saber-toothed squirrel. 5. Queen Latifah as Ellie, the woolly mammoth. 6. Seann William Scott and Josh Peck as [[Crash and Eddie|'Crash and Eddie']], the opossums, respectively. 7. Will Arnett 'as 'Lone Gunslinger Vulture 8. Jay Leno as Fast Tony, the giant armadillo. 9. Tom Fahn as Stu, the Glyptodon. 10. Alex Sullivan as James, the aardvark. 11. Alan Tudyk as Cholly, the chalicothere. 12. Clea Lewis as Female Mini Sloth / Dung Beetle Mom. Production Carlos Saldanha strove to make the characters eyes appear alive and not mechanical. “You want the facial expressions to work. I wanted it to be so that if you looked into their eyes, you would know what they were thinking.” in his own words. The characters, despite being from the last movie, were remodeled for the sequel. Release It premiered in theatres in Belgium on March 1st 2006, in the Northern Hemisphere in March 31st 2006. It was eventually released in 70 countries, with the last release being in China, on June 9th 2006. Reception Critical reception Ice Age: The Meltdown received mixed to average reviews, with Rotten Tomatoes giving the film a "rotten" rating, with 57% of reviews positive. The consensus statement reads: "Despite its impressive animation and the hilarious antics of the saber-toothed squirrel Scrat, Ice Age 2: The Meltdown comes up short on the storytelling front." Another review aggregator, Metacritic, calculated a score of 58, placing it at the high end of the site's "mixed or average reviews" category. Roger Ebert gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four, stating "the first Ice Age movie more or less exhausted these characters and their world, and the meltdown doesn't add much." Box office The film exceeded expectations by opening with an $68,033,544 in its first weekend. This was the second biggest opening for a non-summer, non-holiday release, after the $83,848,082 of the The Passion of the Christ. But the record for highest grossing weekend for March only lasted a year, due to the $70,885,301 weekend of 300. The film grossed a total of $195,330,621 at United States and Canadian box offices, making it the first film in 2006 to pass the $100 million mark. The film has grossed $660,940,780 worldwide and it is the 66th highest grossing film of all time. Ice Age: The Meltdown was the highest grossing animated film worldwide of 2006, but lost to Cars for being the highest grossing animated film in North America. Soundtrack The score is by John Powell; the soundtrack also features the song "Food Glorious Food" from the musical and film Oliver!. Powell composed brand new music for the film that replaced the theme songs from the previous film. Aram Khachaturian's Adagio from Spartacus is featured during Scrat's Heavenly vision. Ice Age: The Meltdown was composed by John Powell and was released on March 28, 2006 by Varèse Sarabande Records. Home Media The Blu-ray Disc and DVD were released in the United States and Canada on November 21st 2006 according to the official web store. They were released in the UK on October 23rd 2006, and both include a new Scrat short, No Time for Nuts. Trivia Sequels Ice Age 3: Dawn of The Dinosaurs (2009) The second Ice Age sequel, Ice Age 3: Dawn of The Dinosaurs was released on July 1st 2009. It was again directed by Carlos Saldanha, and tells a story of Sid being taken by a female Tyrannosaurus rex after stealing her eggs, leading the rest of the protagonists to rescue him in a tropical world inhabited by dinosaurs. Ice Age 4: Continental Drift (2012) The third sequel, Ice Age 4: Continental Drift, was released in 3-D on July 13th 2012, ten years after the release on the [[Ice Age (film)|'first film']]. It was directed by Steve Martino and Mike Thurmeier - the first time without Carlos Saldanha. The film focus on the gang running to a pirate gang. Ice Age 5 (2016) A fourth sequel,' Ice Age 5',''' '''is set to be released on July 15th 2016, ten years after the release of this film. Video game A 2006 video and computer game based on the film was developed and published by Vivendi Games, and the Wii version was released shortly after the launch of the system. It is notable for being Fox Interactive last title. Category:Blue Sky Studios Category:Movies Category:2000s films Category:Candidates for Deletion